LATimes.com -- Friday, August 18, 2000
Art Reviews "Inspiring Links Between Art and Science"
By DAVID PAGEL, Special to The Times
Over the past generation, the idea that artists are godlike
creators has given way to the notion that they are freethinking
inventors, resourceful experimenters whose pragmatism and cleverness
allow them to get the job done -- often in unexpected ways.
At Angles Gallery, a 17-artist show drives this point home,
sometimes belaboring it into a cliche and, at other times, pushing it
to the next level. Organized by guest curator Nowell J. Karten,
"Inventional" never lets you forget that art and science are equally
creative endeavors, each capable of producing results that are best
described in terms of how inspired or uninspired they are.
The most captivating works bring a sense of the inexplicable down
to earth. Accompanied by a four-page, frame-by-frame analysis, Jno
Cook's four-second film of a puppy playing with two scraps of
cardboard is a piece of image-and-text Conceptualism that is as moving
as it is goofy. Looped through a homemade device that the artist has
cobbled together from an old-fashioned film splicer, a VCR motor, and a
pair of manually operated switches, "Rollodog" transforms an ordinary
slice of life into a marvelous stop-action dance that demonstrates
just how extraordinary mundane things can be.
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